When America stood for freedom

There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations bound together by shared values — above all a commitment to democracy and civil liberties. From London to Berlin to Tokyo, in the aftermath of genocide and the utter devastation of World War II, America – as Ronald Reagan put it – was the shining city on the hill. We should never forget that Americans played the pivotal roles in the Nuremberg trials, upholding the rule of law in an impartial and transparent manner in the trials of those who had committed unspeakable atrocities and acts of war. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” declared John F. Kennedy in Berlin, as East Germany tried to trap its own people behind the Berlin Wall.

MAGA, however, doesn’t want to be part of that world. In fact, it doesn’t want a world of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to exist. The Trump administration has become especially hostile to Europe, precisely because the Europeans are trying to hold on to the values MAGA is trying to destroy at home.

Last week the Trump administration released its updated National Security Strategy for the United States. Much of the document is vague, meandering and self-contradictory. But it becomes clear and focused when it turns to Europe. Quite simply, Trump and those around him hate Europe. And they hate it because it still honors the ideals they’re abandoning in America.

The language is astonishing. Europe, the document warns, faces “the stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” Why? Because “it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.” I don’t know why they bothered with the euphemism: “non-European” clearly means “nonwhite.”

But there’s hope, the document declares, thanks to “the growing influence of patriotic European parties,” by which it clearly means parties like Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD.

The political scientist Henry Farrell sums it up this way:

This is, quite straightforwardly, a program for regime change in Europe, aimed at turning it into an illiberal polity. Accomplishing this transformation would involve undermining existing liberal governments in cahoots with Europe’s own far right, and turning Eastern Europe into an ideological wedge against its Western neighbors.

Where is this attack on Europe coming from? Some readers may remember the old slogan from the War on Terror days, “They hate us for our freedom.” Clearly, MAGA hates Europe for its freedom. The people trying to turn America into an authoritarian, white supremacist state, who want us to forsake democratic ideals in favor of Volk, of blood and soil nationalism, want to see Europe go down the same path.

There’s also the role of the tech bros — billionaires who still describe themselves as libertarian but have in practice become hardline authoritarians with enormous sway over the Trump administration. After the European Commission imposed a modest fine on X for failing to obey its rules on transparency, Elon Musk declared that the EU should be abolished and threatened personal retribution against the “EU woke Stasi commissars” responsible for the ruling. And the Trump Administration is acting as the tech bros’ enforcer against Europe, threatening to keep steel tariffs high unless the EU scales back its tech regulations.

Moreover, this is part of a general pattern: the broligarchs hate Europe because the Europeans are trying to impose sensible limits to protect their societies from the well-documented psychological and economic harms that are inflicted by an unrestrained Silicon Valley agenda. For example, the EU is trying to limit the proliferation of digital hate speech as well as the pernicious effects of social media on the young. And more so than the US, it has sought to constrain the monopoly power of the tech titans like Google and Facebook. We should remember that the moderate antitrust and AI regulations adopted by the Biden Administration prompted the tech broligarchy to swing hard behind Trump in the 2024 election.

There are two striking consequences of Trump’s assault on Europe: it weakens the US against what is clearly its only serious geopolitical rival, China, while weakening Europe against the assassin on its doorstep, Russia. As the New York Times points out, this new strategy breaks with Trump’s past rhetoric, which emphasized the dangers posed by China and Russia.

First, turning on our erstwhile allies guarantees that China will best the US in the competition for influence and economic hegemony. The chart below (adjusted for differences in price levels) illustrates this reality:

As of now, China is clearly the world’s largest single economy. But the group of nations that constituted the “free world” (as we knew it) is a much greater economic power than China. So by treating Europe and Canada as enemies rather than allies, Trump has destroyed any plausible capacity to stand up to China. In effect, Trump has chosen white supremacy over actual national greatness.

Second, that goes for Russia as well. Although Russia is far weaker than China, the US or the EU, the war in Ukraine has shown that an emboldened Russia can wreak long-lasting devastation. By attacking the EU, notably on the same blood and soil grounds that Putin attacked Ukraine — as well as by insulting Zelensky and releasing a “peace plan” that was clearly a Russian wish list — Trump has made it clear that our erstwhile allies cannot rely on us to stand up to Russian aggression. Should we be surprised that some allies have recently begun to refuse intelligence sharing?

Now, it’s important to admit that America often failed to live up to its own ideals in the past. For decades we championed freedom and equality abroad while practicing Jim Crow at home. We were a force for democracy and freedom in Europe, but we often propped up dictators and sometimes engineered the overthrow of democratically elected governments — often at the behest of American business interests — in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. So in a very real way, the tech broligarchy is trying to use the power of the US government to subjugate the EU the same way the United Fruit Company once used the power of the US government to subjugate Central America.

In truth, Europe is much closer to being Reagan’s shining city on the hill than Trump’s America. Yet it’s important to acknowledge that in the face of economic and immigration challenges, it too is having a hard time preserving its liberal democratic values. Those “patriotic” — i.e., neo-fascist — European parties are indeed on the rise. Yet, on the whole, Europe is dealing with its economic and social strains without giving up on its core values. For example, the recent Dutch elections, while not a decisive victory for the center, did at least push the far right out of government.

And America itself is not yet lost. Many, and I believe most, Americans still believe in our foundational values of freedom and democracy. For the time being power lies in the hands of people who hate those foundational values — and hate Europe because it still clings to those values. But we can still turn this around and claw our way back to being who we should be.

MUSICAL CODA

For a bit of relief, some trans-Atlantic cooperation:

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